Mistakes Were Made: Hideous Agency and Catharsis in Fallout 3

This post was written for Critical Distance's Blogs of the Round Table August - September 2014.

In the final year of my undergraduate degree (2008/2009), I took a reading course on game studies with the professor who would eventually be my dissertation supervisor. At the time, I was dealing with some fairly rudimentary ideas about immersion and play and, like many new and isolated game scholars, I could have really used a copy of Frans Mäyrä's Introduction to Game Studies.

But in addition to my relative innocence to the field and my boundless enthusiasm for thinking about play, I did have a small concern. Historically, my ability to aim and my experience with games in which you have to aim specifically at things have been very, very poor. The need to accurately target something in a limited time sets off my anxiety disorder something fierce. To this day, my characters in Skyrim don't use bows. First person shooters remain one of least-played genres in my game library. The dog in Duck Hunt haunts me.

At the same time, young me recognized that I wouldn't feel like I was entering the field in good faith without widening my playing experience to include some of the genres I still don't particularly enjoy. Nowadays, I would thoroughly roll my eyes at the idea that one must play certain genres to have scholarly legitimacy, but actively trying to widen my experience proved useful at the time.
\
It also provided the most intense moment of abject terror and horror I've ever had in a game. Allow me to explain.

I decided to further investigate Fallout 3, particularly due to the fabulous in-game set-up of being born into the world. But as I played through the escape from Vault 101, I accidentally shot Butch's mother. Not used to the game's targeting system (which is easily brought up, provided you know which button to press), I responded to my childhood bully's panicked begging for me to save his mother from rad roaches by firing wildly and killing her. The roaches survived and attacked me.

Upon realizing what I had done, I panicked further and shut off my XBox 360, overcome with horror. I sat there alone in my house, not wanting to even touch the controller. I felt physically ill at what I had done in the game. I had intended to save Ellen, despite the fact that her son was a bully, but her screams and his panic compounded  my own nervousness about aiming and suddenly she was dead. If I hadn't shut off the game system, I probably would have killed Butch, too. ...The roaches were relatively safe, all things considered.

I didn't pick the game up again. Because I had immediately shut off the game, if I restarted from my last save file, it would never have happened. Problem solved, right? But no. I had killed Ellen and for me that was an immutable fact, whatever the game did or did not register. The next time I returned to The Wasteland, it would be because a jerk in a bad suit shot me in the face. Maybe it was sympathy with the long-dead Ellen that brought my particular Courier back from the grave.

Perhaps the worst part of the feeling at the time was that it hadn't been some moral choice I was troubled by, but it was just an accident, one that confirmed my anxieties about my ability to handle a fairly common game mechanic. It simultaneously sparked a panic attack and more broadly fed into my insecurity about wanting to pursue game studies but feeling somehow inadequate as a player and scholar - because I can't aim, because I panic under pressure. For a moment, I had killed Ellen and proven all of those idiotic misogynist steroetypes about girls and games true.

 Hell of a thing to happen because I didn't know to press the right bumper.

Often the ability to provoke an emotional response is a mark of a game's strength, but in the case of Fallout 3, the anxiety kept me from playing the game again. At the time, I wasn't getting any kind of treatment for my anxiety, so it was something of a perfect storm of personal and professional anxities and just plain bad luck - both for Ellen and for me.

At the same time, I look back on this experience as something of a watershed moment for my academic practice. Nothing since - no imposter syndrome, no poorly received conference paper, no taunt on the internet - has ever been as bad as that was. Being medicated has probably helped, but the fact remains that I already experienced the worst anxiety and self-doubt my beloved object of study could muster in me. I had done my worst. Killing Ellen in Fallout 3 freed me to play and study in ways that worked for me, not for some imaginary standard to which I could never measure up.

A happy accident? Not entirely. But like many accidents, powerful.

Changing Scholarly Altitudes : DiGRA 2014

Early this August, I attended the 2014 DiGRA conference near Salt Lake City, Utah.  It was my first time attending a DiGRA event (I watched the 2013 Atlanta conference deadline pass by with a sigh).  A more personal account of my experience might follow in another post, but this one is about a critical response to DiGRA 2014 and I hope to see more of the conversation by other participants.

The games criticism power duo of Zoya Street of Memory Insufficient and Andrew Grant Wilson of Silverstring Media have been publishing a series of insightful letters in response to the conference on the Silverstring Media blog and while I can't provide the same level of critical eloquence, it's a good reminder that we should respond to our conference experiences and, when needed (and it's pretty much always needed) offer critiques and, when possible, solutions.

I was absolutely thrilled to be accepted to the conference. Six days in Utah meant meeting new colleagues and hearing great ideas. To this day, I remain very happy that I applied. But there are other aspects of my experience beyond my nerdy joy that deserve explanation. I don't blame the organizers and volunteers for some of the problems this year. These folks made huge commitments of their time and energy and did a great job. But I do think we need to speak out about concerns of cost, accessibility, diversity and other areas in which we can improve.

After being accepted, my DiGRA experience began with massive sticker shock, delivered via my credit card, in continuing and frightening instalments. In my situation, the combination of DiGRA membership, early conference registration, air fare, hotel fees and food costs are probably somewhere slightly above $2000, and I write this as someone who largely subsisted on the food offered during breaks and a substantial collection of energy bars, fruit bars, and other foods in bar form, purchased in bulk in Canada. Over six days, I spent money at the in-house restaurants twice, motivated by the really excellent company. And despite leaving my room's garbage cans filled with enough wrappers that I worry the cleaning staff will think I was nesting in them, I spent that minimum $2000, only $300 of which I might be able to get back from my department. In a strange note, I'm actually one of the very lucky ones this time - I won a copy of Unity Pro I might be able to sell to cover the rest of the cost and maybe more. But not everyone is so lucky.

The choice to situate DiGRA at the Snowbird Resort is an understandable one. The location offers conference services and simply staggering views of the surrounding mountains. An included ski-lift ticket took me up the mountain and for a moment I genuinely forget how much money I had spent. But using a resort location drives up prices and raises the obstacles for persons who want to participate, to share their work and energy. It immediately makes it harder for the voices we need the most to join in the conversation. We have an ethical and professional responsibility to mitigate the costs of attending DiGRA in the future.

And accessibility more broadly is an important issue. The Snowbird resort itself had some significant physical accessibility issues and may actually have been designed by M.C. Escher. Anyone with difficulty handling stairs and barriers was immediately, if unintentionally, sent a message that their needs were not a priority. A space being technically navigable does not mean it is truly accessible. We have to fight for welcoming spaces at conferences and similar events. Cost and physical barriers are major factors in whether our events are welcoming, or even accessible period.

Diversity and a plurality of voices and perspectives are key to the success of conferences more generally. But they're also essential for the integrity and ethical responsibility conferences should strive for. That DiGRA is an academic conference in the first place raises barriers for potential participants, that ignore the worth of their work. And we should keep that in mind when we create the conditions of our next conference. And every conference.

At the DiGRA Fishbowl on Diversity in Game Studies, it was noted correctly that 'we can't accept submissions we don't get' but what that leaves out is that we have a responsibility to create the conditions to encourage and enable those missing submissions - from people of colour, from trans and genderqueer people, from women, from activists, from people living and working in poverty. DiGRA needs to solicit and listen to advice and criticism from the people under-represented at its events and recognize that we are responsible for the submissions we don't get.

Another important comment was made by Dr. Gillian Smith during the Diversity Fishbowl, namely that people who point out problems are not the only ones responsible for organizing efforts to deal with them. The people likeliest to notice problems - missing voices, for example, or instances of sexism or racism in an organization - don't always possess the resources that the ones least likely to notice problems do have. So, if we at DiGRA actually value the input of the people pointing out problems, we need to offer help to address that input. Time, effort, money, coverage, encouragement - the people to whom these resources are readily available have an ethical responsibility to share them. Sympathy is not enough. We need resources and help.

DiGRA President Dr. Mia Consalvo said something that resonated with me, that "We are DiGRA," that the people in the room, at the conference are part of the organization with the resources and responsibilities that entails. I am very happy to be a part of DiGRA and I want change. I want to know who else wants change. It's important to talk solutions, but it's also important to share concerns, to express anger, fear, and hope. The more we meaningfully converse with each other, the better.

So here is a starting set of principles I think DiGRA should adopt. (It's only a start and I encourage interested folks to critique it.)
1) A commitment to lowering the monetary barriers to involvement in DiGRA and its events;
2) A commitment to radical inclusivity (similar to the one discussed at the 2014 Canadian Game Studies Association Conference); this includes:
     a) genuine physical accessibility at conference venues
     b) creating the conditions to welcome submissions from under-represented contributors
     c) exploring other areas of improvement in dialogue with members and non-members of DiGRA
3) A commitment to ensuring the acknowledgement by members of DiGRA with access to privilege and power of their ethical responsibility to help with the problems affect fellow participants in games studies and criticism

And I formally suggest that we try out the idea of a Game Studies and Criticism  Camping Trip series, as suggested by Zoya Street here.

Scholars Have Joined Your Party!: Why Academics Should Join Project Play

Last Monday, I wrote about my personal experience of London, Ontario's Project Play with the promise of writing a critical consideration of the event as a follow-up. My key point is this: events like Project Play are a great opportunity for games studies scholars to connect with the playing community. Exhibitors at Project Play included vendors, local game creators, community organizations and representatives from Fanshawe. Notably and lamentably absent were representatives from local Western University, game studies associations like DiGRA and CGSA, and middle-state publishers in the field like First-Person Scholar. I'll address each in turn.

Because Project Play brings together disparate elements of the playing community, the absence of representation from the local university was disappointing. PP is a great opportunity for gaming-minded departments like Computer Science and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies as well as organizations like the Digital Recreation, Entertainment, Art and Media (DREAM) Group operating out of the university to make community connections. It's important for any university to make local connections, but given that gaming scholars are so often also players and creators, gaming studies needs to be particularly welcoming to the community members who also often play multiple roles in the production, release, use and critique of games. Finally, showing an openness to gaming as a field of interest highlights Western University as potentially welcoming to PP attendees - it's just good marketing. I hope that next year representatives from Western and particularly its game studies-friendly departments and research groups, like those from Fanshawe, step up to support and attend PP in an official capacity.

Independent games studies organizations like DiGRA and CGSA should also consider getting a table at PP and events like it. While these organizations continue to grow, they still need grassroots connections in order to thrive. As said previously, it's often the case that gaming enthusiasts don't just play - they often create and critique as well. Game studies organizations should actively make connections with community events like PP in order to not only raise their own profile among attendees, but also to scout for potential presenters at our own events, particularly for academic attendees not yet applying their professional talents to their personal interest in gaming. The presence of game studies organizations at events like these (particularly in a university town like London) would show that game studies is increasingly a viable research area that can intersect with a wide range of fields.Making connections at events like PP increases the pool of DiGRa's and CGSA's potential attendees and contributors.

Finally, another category of game studies group that should attend events like PP is that of game studies publishers like First Person Scholar (Note: I should dislose that I'm a member of the editing team of FPS and that I'm emailing them about this forthwith). Websites, particularly those that occupy a place between academic blogging and academic journals shoulod use events like PP to court both readers and contributors. While sites like FPS publish the work of game studies scholars specifically, our readership can and should extend beyond the ranks of graduate students and faculty. Connecting with play enthusiasts would raise the profile of middle-state publishers in game studies as well as make connections with academics in other fields not currently connecting their professional work to the games they love.

If I had my way, this year, PP and other events like it would hear requests for tables from university departments and research groups, national and international game studies associations and publishers in the field. The presence of enthusiastic scholars at PP would forge key connections between the academy and the play communiy as part of an event raising funds to help children access play - that's a lot of awesome in one place. As PP demonstrates, everyone deserves a chance to play and academics should be getting in on the fun - for their own good as well as others'.

Lego Heads and Gamer Tales: CGSA 2013

My envy of those attending this year's DiGRA has me thinking back on my first attendance of the Canadian Game Studies Association's conference at the 2013 Congress of the Humanities in Victoria, B.C. CGSA was my first game studies conference and it remains a high point in my time as a game studies nerd.

Because I operate out of an English department, my area of interest sometimes leaves me feeling like a cuckoo in a nest of some other, much less annoying bird. After presenting on Mass Effect at ACCUTE in 2012, even though it was an excellent conference and I was treated very well, I was hungry for a conference in my field.

Going into the CGSA, I was nervous. Presenting on games at an English conference or being the only presenter on games at a multimedia conference is in some ways an easy job. You may feel like the responsibility of representing game studies as a vibrant and, above all, legitimate field rests solely on the shoulders of some chump who happens to be you, but you're also relatively unlikely to get called out by someone who knows game studies better than you do.

A conference in your field, however, has a whole different set of anxieties, embodied by the large number of brilliant peers you suddenly have. I imagine that every specialized conference has this effect to a certain extent, but when game studies is still being debated in some universities, when the legitimacy of the field itself is still part of the argument that has to be made in dissertation proposals, game studies conferences will continue to be more of a haven (or cabal) than ones on Shakespearean Studies, for example. The presenter swag bag in the form of a Lego figurine whose parts you could swap with other attendees certainly helped this feeling.

Blame the trading of Lego heads or the open bar after the AGM if you must, but for me, attending CGSA was like coming home. Being presented with the sheer mass of brain-power present was like being punched in the neck. But gobsmacked or not, being among scholars who assumed the importance of game studies as a base for other thinking was pretty heady stuff.

They key things I took away from this year's CGSA were three: the dual poles of Toronto and Montreal, the many hats of the presenters, and correspondingly, the exciting range of presentations. While we had scholars from all over, there were substantial camps working in Toronto and Montreal. I'm hoping to make connections in both places, likely thanks to my close friendship with the Greyhound company. I also want to know about game communities in other cities: what's going on in Edmonton and Waterloo?

Presenters ranged from game designers to game studies professors and starry-eyed graduate students in a wide range of fields. Even beyond the interdisciplinarity that typifies game studies, part of what's so attractive about the field is that creators, players  and critics so often wear all three hats. It means that conversations aren't limited to the academic perspective and increasingly, it encourages scholastically-inclined game nerds like myself to learn how to create as well as critique (note: my efforts have not yet proved fruitful).

Part of those conversations include presentations like the ones at CGSA this year, which ranged from deeply personal discussions of the relationship between gaming and anxiety (@Forestghost_), MMOs in Russia (Cat Goodfellow, who has the best name in game studies), and the problems presented by gamification (Mark Chen). On a purely selfish level, hearing about such different topics was really invigorating for my own research.

And that, I think, is the most important part of conferences like CGSA. Yes, they make important connections, they encourage cross-pollination and they keep people informed. But they send participants home excited and it's passion and the grim commitment that follows that gets the work done.

After coming home from the CGSA, I finished my dissertation proposal. Coincidence? Mostly not.